Enhancing and Displacing Literacy Practices: Examining Student Publishing in a Fifth Grade Writer’s Workshop

Authors

  • Kimberly Lenters University of Calgary

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.20360/G2X30W

Keywords:

Writing, Writer's Workshop, Literacy Practices, Sociocultural Perpsectives

Abstract

Publication of student work has been considered a mainstay of the writer’s workshop since the early days of the ‘children as authors’ movement (Graves, 1983). However, this philosophy, which stipulates students should share their work with peers, may not be one that always benefits students.  This case study utilizes the concept of literacy-in-action (Brandt & Clinton, 2002), to look at the manner in which one local rendition of writer’s workshop both enhanced and displaced student literacy practices.  The guiding question asks: How are focal students, Sara, Ally and Nigel, engaging in the practice of publication of their writing and how are those publications, as literacy objects, mediating their practice of literacy in the writer’s workshop? The examination of writer’s workshop first presents the way publication of student writing found its way into Sara and Nigel’s classroom and the kinds of investments accumulated in it as it made its way into their practice of classroom writing.  It then presents the agentful activity engaged in by these students in their classroom literacy practice of writing for publication.  Through the analysis, the ways an assessment-focused writer’s workshop worked to enhance and displace individual student’s literacy practices are brought out.

Author Biography

Kimberly Lenters, University of Calgary

Kimberly Lenters is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary

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Published

2012-01-25

How to Cite

Lenters, K. (2012). Enhancing and Displacing Literacy Practices: Examining Student Publishing in a Fifth Grade Writer’s Workshop. Language and Literacy, 14(1), 125–151. https://doi.org/10.20360/G2X30W

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Section

Articles